Monday, November 16, 2009

City Sourced, a great app idea

I met a fellow today named David Kralik who is part of a new venture that has developed a wonderful iphone, Blackberry, etc. application called City Sourced. The idea is that, if you see something wrong in your town (a pothole, a broken street sign, or some other unsafe condition), you can immediately send a GPS-ed message with a picture of the problem to the municipality to inform them of the problem.

Just think, if I had had it this morning (and if I still had a Blackberry), I could have reported the problem I saw on the local transit system.

2 comments:

Hal said...

It doesn't seem to be available, but here is a website:

http://www.citysourced.com/Home.aspx

david kralik said...

Thank you Hal for the review! We're humbled and honored. CitySourced is all about making your city a better place to live.

The app is free and will be available shortly in the iTunes AppStore and later in the App stores for Blackberry, etc.

When launched, CitySourced will work in over 1900 cities nationwide. We're in the space of "micro crime solving" because, as the famous book, "Fixing Broken Windows" noted if we fight crime at its root (the broken sidewalks, burned out street lights, etc...) we are more likely to prevent larger problems that plague cities.

Another interesting thing to share on why we built CitySourced is that, according to Law Enforcement Journal(09/2005), In the United States the annual cost of graffiti abatement programs is estimated between $10 and $12 billion. In just the mass transit industry, the cost of vandalism is growing by 11 percent a year, according to a survey sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration.